Appoxee's Bloghttp://blog.appoxee.com
Give'em a pushTue, 13 Jan 2015 11:19:25 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.5Appoxee Joins Teradatahttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1072
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1072#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 11:19:25 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1072Today is an exciting day for everyone at Appoxee, as we are sharing the news that we’ve officially joined Teradata, the leader in big data analytics and marketing applications.

What does this mean? It means that starting now, the Appoxee team is part of the Teradata Marketing Applications unit, which provides leading solutions and services for digital marketing, marketing resource management, omni-channel marketing, and marketing analytics.

Combining our mobile marketing automation expertise with Teradata’s industry-leading marketing applications will empower marketers to create insights to better connect them with individuals. We all know that the world is increasingly connected through our mobile devices, and together, Appoxee and Teradata are going to help marketers have more individualized conversations with their customers.

We’re both known for helping marketers be better marketers, and this is truly a “win-win” for Appoxee and Teradata. But more importantly, we feel that our customers will realize significant benefits from the combined power of our two companies. Our customers will:

Receive the same, robust mobile capabilities to which they are accustomed, while gaining the benefits of a leading corporation with a global presence and extensive experience in helping customers utilize data for competitive advantage.

Be able to extend their mobile marketing programs to take advantage of additional communication channels including email, web and social media, sharing insights and providing a better overall experience for consumers.

Continue to work with their trusted contacts at Appoxee and use our platform as they do today. As integrated features become available, they can begin taking advantage of those as well learn of other leading analytic data solutions.

I think you‘ll agree that there’s a good reason this is an exciting day for Appoxee and for our customers. Stay tuned – we will continue to communicate news and updates in the coming weeks and months. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@appoxee.com.

Thanks,
Itay Levy
CEO, Appoxee

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10720Industry Spotlight: How Push Can Transform Travel Appshttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1069
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1069#commentsTue, 23 Dec 2014 07:31:58 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1069In 2014, over half of travel research and booking was done via mobile. As with almost every industry, the travel and hospitality sector is being revolutionized by mobile and the app economy. Long gone are the days of travel agents, disinformation and guessing games. And when it comes to the actual travel experience itself, a bevy of travel apps now keep travelers informed, on time, entertained, and upgraded all throughout every element of their trip (flight, hotel, car, check-ins, check-out, etc.)

Appoxee has several clients in the travel and hospitality space, and we’ve worked closely with them to come up with strategies to engage and retain their users. Here are some of the campaigns we’ve found effective in this vertical:

Activate Users: Though travel apps will obviously be used less frequently than other apps like Facebook, Instagram, etc., you can keep your app top of mind with users keeping them updated and engaged with push messages on pinpointed relevant information.

Activate dormant users by sending out messages when you have special events occurring—limited time offers and deals tailored to the season, their travel patterns and any other demographic data you have on them. You can also send messages out when you have a new app version, service or feature in your app.

Increase conversions and revenue:Making travel plans is often a complex process overloaded with options. Many users may be on the verge of purchasing, but then for one reason or another don’t complete the transaction. Sending out a targeted push to “shopping cart abandoners” with a reminder to purchase is a surefire way to increase conversions. You can also induce action by providing price alert updates that notify users when prices go up or down.

Additionally, you can upsell some of your users by offering them pinpointed cross promotions. For example, if a user books a flight, send out a push with an offer for a discount on a hotel room or car rental along with it.

Keep customers informed and updated during their travel journey: Timely push notifications with real time data are sure to keep your customers engaging with your app. Tell users about flight delays, security lineups, traffic reports, price changes and everything they would need to know about their trip. Send push messaging to let your customer know what is nearby to the hotel and some attractions they would be interested in seeing during their stay.

Increase loyalty: As mentioned before, limited time only deals are bread and butter to the travel industry. But you can also increase customer affinity by instituting a loyalty program with special perks, features, and rewards for your high power users.
Use geolocation:Another monetization avenue is done through geo-location. Have a customer staying at your hotel? Send them offers from the restaurant and spa on the property. This makes it simple for customers to take advantage of the benefits you offer at your hotel.

Though at first glance it may seem that travel apps would only be used when the occasion demands it, in fact a well thought out push messaging strategy can ensure that your app reminds on users’ minds and provides value even outside of actual travel periods.

For more information on Appoxee’s features, check out our product page.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10690Holiday Mobile Tips For Non-Retail Appshttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1060
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1060#commentsThu, 11 Dec 2014 13:06:25 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1060Previously we covered how retail/e-commerce apps can optimize their apps and messaging strategy for the holiday season. But of course there are many more verticals out there that can and should take into consideration the holidays in order to maximize engagement, retention and revenues.
GAMING:Release a holiday-themed version of your game: Games like Angry Birds have done this to great effect. Releasing a holiday-themed version of your game, replete with in-app changes to appearance, theme, sounds, etc. will appeal to people looking for that “holiday spirit.”
Offer holiday themed in-app purchases: Likewise you can change up your in-app purchase inventory to include holiday themed objects, currency, items, and more, in order to provide more novelty and fun factor.
Cross promote your other apps: Since this is a time period when many users are receiving new smartphones and downloading new apps, be sure to maximize downloads of your other app titles by cross promoting them (with in-app messages, for example.) You can even consider offering a discount to do so.
Remember, you can be a bit more aggressive with messaging: Because many people will be off from work and home during the last two weeks of December, you have a bit more permission to send push messages throughout the day, especially as consumers are playing and experimenting with more games at home than usual during the period between Christmas and New Year’s.
Geo-target carefully: If you have a broadly dispersed global user base, be sure to be considerate of countries and cultures that may not partake in Christmas (broad swaths of the Middle East and Asia for example.) You can do targeted campaigns for different cultural holidays in different countries as appropriate. For example, in Russia Christmas is celebrated on January 7th.

TRAVEL:Provide family-oriented travel packages: Many families are in vacation planning mode during the holidays. Be sure to communicate with messages that convey feelings of “family time” and “togetherness” and offer group travel packages during this time period.

Boost last minute purchases by promoting recent searches: Use your customer search history to provide on-the-spot discounts and promotions to destinations or services your customers’ recently searched for. Consumers caught up in the gift-giving (and buying) mood are also more likely to make impulsive travel purchases during the holidays. Weekend getaways and short trips are especially popular.

Keep customers informed and updated during their travel journey: Timely push notifications which contain real time data are sure to keep your customers engaged with your app. Tell them about flight delays, security lineups, traffic reports, price changes and everything they would need to know about during their hectic holiday trip. Send push messages that let your customer know what is nearby to the hotel and some attractions they would be interested in seeing during their stay.
Send a thank you to past purchasers and loyal customers: If you have some type of loyalty program in place, Christmas and New Year’s is a great time to stop and take a moment to thank your most valuable users, both with a personal note and with some type of valuable promotion or discount to start off the New Year right with positive brand feelings.

FINANCE:Provide valuable tools: The holidays are a time when people are often stressed about their financial situation and the obligations that gift-giving, travel and hosting bring.

Finance apps can help consumers de-stress and manage the holidays by offering valuable tools and services. Think of something like a holiday gift budget tracker, with a push campaign set to warn users when they are at or near their budget limit.

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are hugely important events for e-commerce apps, the holidays in general are an important time for all app verticals. These are just a few strategies that apps across the business spectrum can use during the holiday season to keep their users engaged. And of course, no matter the vertical, it’s always worth adopting an attitude of gratitude and thanks during the holiday season.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10600The Evolution of Media (a.k.a- Don’t Forget The Power of Push)http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1035
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1035#commentsThu, 04 Dec 2014 12:22:09 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1035If you have or manage your own mobile app, you’re no doubt constantly heads down in the struggle to acquire, retain and engage your users, all while maximizing revenues. In the ever more difficult and crowded world of mobile apps, it’s easy to miss sight of the fact of just what an amazing opportunity smartphones provide to marketers and companies today.

Think about it—just how awesomely powerful and personal marketing communications have become with apps and the mobile ecosystem.

If you consider it in terms of the history of advertising and marketing, the methods of old (flyers, billboards, radio, television, etc.) were extremely blunt and cast far too wide of a net, indiscriminately spraying millions of irrelevant consumers. You were literally throwing dollars to the wind.

Today you have an ideal situation: an always on, perfectly personalized smart mobile device in the pocket of EVERY consumer. And better yet, your users are willingly seeking out information and interaction with your brand, all day long by giving you permission to end push notifications. On average, a smartphone user checks his phone 1500 times a week. Users are literally addicted to their phones.

Consumer check their smartphones 1500 times a week

And you, the marketer, have the ability to harness and leverage the massive amount of data you have on hand about your users to send them smart, automated and personalized messages that are much more likely to appeal to them and make them take action.

Forget telling someone to “go to the mall and check out our Year End Sale!” hoping they’ll drive to the store. Forget sending wasteful direct mail coupons to mailboxes. Now, you can send a push message deep linked directly to the online sale section of your app. And the best, almost magical part of it—with the tap of a button, the user can purchase the item (whether a physical item or an in-app purchase) and add immediately to your bottom line.

Of course, now you can also see if all this is working or not, with robust analytics and tracking that show you exactly how your campaigns are performing and how you can tweak and improve along the way.

So when you’re feeling down and out and caught up in the tornado of user acquisition, retention, app abandonment, etc.—don’t forget, we’re living in a golden age here. Use this powerful gift to your advantage.

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About AppoxeeAppoxee is a mobile marketing automation platform, designed by marketers for marketers. We provide services to increase usage, retention and revenues to your apps. Appoxee works with leading brands, agencies and publishersto serve more than 300 million users worldwide with over a billion messages per month. For more information, visit http://www.appoxee.com. Or email us at sales@appoxee.com to schedule a demo.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10350How Android Lollipop changes the push notification game and signals the future of the mobile experiencehttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1016
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1016#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 14:25:38 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1016If you have an Android phone and recently downloaded the new Lollipop software update, you’ve undoubtedly noticed big changes. Google has completely visually and mechanically revamped its Android OS. You can now see the heavy hand of Google’s new “Material Design” philosophy everywhere, which makes use of flat design, bright colors, the “card” based system and lots of heavy layering.

But alongside all these cosmetic changes, there is quite a big difference when it comes to the realm of push notifications. Specifically, push notifications can now finally be viewed from the lock screen.

It’s clear that Google is playing catch up with Apple here, which has had this capability for years. From a marketer’s perspective, this can be seen as a positive development, as Android moves to a more personal and “helpful” direction with push notifications. At any rate, Android push notifications are definitely now more sophisticated.

Not only can your users now see your Android push notifications faster on their lock screens, they can now be expanded or minimized to show more information. They can also be prioritized or hidden temporarily according to your privacy controls or based on your usage. And the user can interact with and respond to many push notifications directly instead of launching into the app, as in iOS8 but in even more advanced ways.

What does this mean for app marketers, other than faster access through the lock screen? In fact, Google’s revamp of push notifications is a sign of just how increasingly central notifications are to the broader mobile experience.

It may be that a screen full of standalone app icons will recede in importance in the future as ever more sophisticated notifications become the primary way users interact with a company or service. Rather than diving and launching into many independent destination apps, users may increasingly prefer to interact from the “notification layer” instead.

While this may not really make sense for some app verticals like gaming, which will always require an immersive experience, for many apps this will be a big change.

This means brands are going to have to think smarter and more critically about how they will use the limited real estate of the notification screen to entice and inform users without the “crutch” of launching into a fully blown out app.

How will the future turn out? While impossible to say for sure, there’s no doubt that push notifications are moving into a more primary role in the mobile experience (rather than their initial role as blunt promotional tool), making it that much more important for your company to focus on a smart push messaging strategy for your app.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10160How To Get Your Retail App Ready For The Holiday Seasonhttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1011
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1011#commentsWed, 26 Nov 2014 12:57:19 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1011The Holy Grail of American retail is almost upon us—Black Friday—and with it the official kickoff of the holiday retail season.

Of course, if you have a retail/m-commerce app you already know that it’s not just about the brick and mortar anymore. Nearly all consumers are doing research and exploring products in mobile apps, and almost as many are actually buying through smartphones and tablets.

But what exactly should you be doing to maximize purchases and revenue on the one hand, and keep your users happy, engaged and delighted all the way through New Year’s on the other?

Check out our strategic suggestions for how you can turbo-charge your retail app this holiday season.
A no-brainer: employ holiday-themed imagery and copywritingWhile you may think it goes without saying, it’s important to give your users visual, auditory and textual cues that this time of year is “special” and different. Without going overboard, employ winter and holiday visuals, or add holiday themed sounds and alerts to your messages. You can still keep the text of your push notifications pretty straightforward and focused on the user benefit, but you can have more fun with holiday-themed in-app messages.
Smartly target shopping cart abandonersThe swirl around Thanksgiving to Christmas is a chaotic time for shoppers, as they sort through the onslaught of promotional sales and messages from countless brands. A pinpointed way to push through the clutter is to leverage your customer data to target users who have left items in their cart (either on your site or in the app) and send a push notification within 24 hours reminding them to complete the purchase. Better yet, if you’re able to offer some type of discount on the item, you can be sure to increase conversion.

Think about your AFTER the holidays strategyWhile you may be rightly focused on the holiday season itself, the smartest mobile marketers are also thinking about January 1st. Similar to targeting shopping cart abandoners, after the holiday season officially ends, you can send your users a push offering a “Last Chance” opportunity to purchase items leftover in their carts or on their wish lists that they never got around to purchasing.

Show your gratitude to loyal customers, and try to make new onesThe holiday season is a natural time to show gratitude to your most valuable customers, particularly if you already have a loyalty program set up. While you’ll obviously be coming up with attractive offers and discounts for the general market, reserve your most special or amazing deals for your power users, and use personalization to deliver them something relevant and specific. Even using their first name and providing an exclusive token discount is enough to induce warm feelings toward your brand. You can also drive registration into your loyalty programs by giving out introductory coupons and educating your customers on the benefits of being in the program.

Drive downloads to your app at brick-and-mortar locations and other channelsYou can also use the higher foot traffic in physical store locations to drive download of your mobile app by dangling exclusive benefits, sales or features available only inside your app to your shoppers. Encourage download of your app through email marketing and social media channels as well.

Make your holiday offers and sales more timely and localIt’s one thing to do a time-sensitive promotion or flash sale to pull consumers into the app or physical store. However, over the holidays you should try to be even more dynamic and locally relevant to your users—sending them information and offers depending on the factors on the ground in their area—weather and traffic conditions, local holiday events and schedules, etc. For example, offering free shipping during a blizzard when people can’t drive is a surefire way to increase mobile sales while also making them smile.
Make it easier for you customers to pay!There are a lot of clunky mobile payment and transaction systems out there. Is your app’s simple and easy to use? With the introduction of Apply Pay, the bar has been set high for providing easy m-commerce payment. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade your system?

You can differentiate yourself from all the mobile noise from other retail apps out there by implementing some of these strategies above, not only during the holiday season but afterward as well.

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About AppoxeeAppoxee is a mobile marketing automation platform, designed by marketers for marketers. We provide services to increase usage, retention and revenues to your apps. Appoxee works with leading brands, agencies and publishersto serve more than 300 million users worldwide with over a billion messages per month. For more information, visit http://www.appoxee.com. Or email us at sales@appoxee.com to schedule a demo.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=101105 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid When Sending Pushhttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1004
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1004#commentsSun, 23 Nov 2014 08:50:54 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=1004As our clients prove, a well-executed push messaging strategy is a surefire way to increase mobile engagement and retention, and ultimately, the lifetime value of your users.

But, as we learned from Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility. It’s all too easy to abuse this newly found capability called push by overusing or misusing it. If 20 years ago somebody would have told you that one day all consumers would be carrying around handheld digital devices in their pockets 24/7 with which they could immediately and willingly engage with and purchase your products or services with just the swipe of a finger, you would probably think they were indulging in wishful thinking.

Still, marketers are abusing this privilege every single day. And we’d like to highlight how you can avoid falling into some of the most likely traps.

Offense #1: Sending generic blast messagesIt seems that app marketers have forgotten the lessons they should have learned from the email marketing revolution, where generic spam emails have caused open rates to plummet over the years.

Likewise, when apps send out mass, generic messages to their users without any element of personalization, engagement is bound to be low. As a marketer, resist the urge to be lazy and send out generic deals and offers. You probably have so much personal data on your customers held within your organization that it should be easy to create targeted segments and send users more personalized and relevant messages and offers.

Offense #2: Sending messages at the wrong timeThough most mobile users are at this point accustomed to a steady stream of push notifications rolling in throughout the day, you can still make a rookie mistake by not taking into account the user’s time zone and location.

Obviously you need to send push messages in a user’s local time, so you’re not waking them at 3am. But more than that you can take advantage of new technologies like Appoxee’s Best Time To Send, a proprietary algorithm which calculates the optimal times of day that each individual user is most likely to open with and engage with the app.

Offense #3: Sending messages with no clear benefit and call to actionAll too often app marketers forget that when writing the actual content of push notifications, you have to provide something of tangible value and give a forceful call to action. Sending generic messages like “Come back and play!” are more likely to make eyes glaze over than sending something specific and enticing like “Open the app to check out 15 new levels.” Since you’re competing for attention with so many other notifications and distractions, make sure your message contains explicit instructions or provides a concrete benefit.

Offense #4: Sending messages with mistakes or code showingA push message which is clearly sent to the wrong person or which contains spelling, grammar or coding errors can turn off a user immediately, or prompt them to share the embarrassing message online and hurt your brand reputation. It’s important to preview and test your push messages before you send them out, across a variety of devices, to ensure they will be delivered properly.

Offense #5: Sending duplicate messages across devicesIt’s now common that the average consumer may own more than one mobile device—a smartphone plus a tablet, let’s say. If your back-end systems aren’t sophisticated enough to recognize the same user across multiple devices, you will risk alienating them with duplicate or irrelevant messages—for example, sending a series of welcome messages to a frequent, heavily engaged user who simply installed your app on their new tablet in addition to their phone.

Avoiding these common pitfalls is essential for improving your push messaging strategy. But ultimately, it’s your choice whether to use push like a blunt instrument (“spray and pray”) or whether you want to employ segmentation, personalization and automation to send out messages that are thoughtful, specific and deeply relevant to your users.

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About AppoxeeAppoxee is a mobile marketing automation platform, designed by marketers for marketers. We provide services to increase usage, retention and revenues to your apps. Appoxee works with leading brands, agencies and publishersto serve more than 300 million users worldwide with over a billion messages per month. For more information, visit http://www.appoxee.com. Or email us at sales@appoxee.com to schedule a demo.

]]>http://blog.appoxee.com/?feed=rss2&p=10040How The New iOS8 Interactive Notifications Will Help You Boost Engagement & Conversionshttp://blog.appoxee.com/?p=992
http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=992#commentsSun, 09 Nov 2014 15:00:32 +0000http://blog.appoxee.com/?p=992In case you missed it, there’s been a big new development in the world of push notifications that comes along with the release of Apple’s iOS8: the ability to send your users Interactive Notifications.

What exactly does this mean? It means that on iOS, now your users will not just passively receive push notifications and tap or swipe them away. Instead they’ll be able to interact with notifications through a host of new button options that can drive more conversions while also taking into better account the user’s preferences and wishes. The result? Your push messages become more personal, actionable and engaging.

In practical terms, this means for each push message you send, you’ll be able to define a binary set of actions that a user can take from the message. Some button pair examples might include:

As you can see, with iOS8 you can drive conversion to specific app actions and provide more opportunities for a user to say “maybe” instead of giving a flat out no. It’s less pushy and more nuanced.

This can be especially helpful for retail apps that can now give their users an option to come back to items later, rather than force a purchase right away. For apps that send frequent reminders of appointments and check-ins, it gives the users the option to be reminded again later or to have the event dismissed completely. For gaming apps, you can try playing with humor and come up with unique and fun button combinations to get your users back into the action.

Paired with deep linking—the ability to send a user to a specific page or section of your app directly from a push—the new iOS8 push notifications are a one-two punch for increasing the relevancy of your push messages. The possibilities for button pairs are as endless and varied as the millions of apps out there!

“Appoxee has allowed us to efficiently step up our push notification strategy. They made it easy for us to create smart, behavioral, targeted messages and they have become core to our mobile marketing efforts.” –Lior Gerson, VP, Product Management

mySupermarket

mySupermarket is a leading online shopping and comparison website for groceries, household items and health and beauty products in the UK, US and Israel. It enables users to compare prices across a number of online stores. The mySupermarket mobile app is used by more than 500,000 shoppers worldwide.

Goals

Drive increased app usage with promotions and special offers

Re-activate dormant users who haven’t used the app in some time

Optimize push notification open rates by sending messages at local time

Maximizing Special Offers

Recently, mySupermarket conducted a retention campaign experiment to see if they could win back users who had been inactive. By using Appoxee’s out of the box segmentation features, they targeted their users by Last Activation date, grouping together a segment of users who hadn’t visited the app for a while.

mySupermarket then crafted a push message with a special discount coupon for 30% off select items and embedded it with Appoxee’s Deep Linking functionality, so that when opened, the push directed them straight to the specific offer.

Using these tactics, mySupermarket saw an 88% increase from their typical daily activation rate!

mySupermarket also sends their messages in the user’s local time across different time zones, ensuring that their offers land at just the right times and not in the middle of the night.

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About AppoxeeAppoxee is a mobile marketing automation platform, designed by marketers for marketers. We provide services to increase usage, retention and revenues to your apps. Appoxee works with leading brands, agencies and publishers to serve more than 300 million users worldwide with over a billion messages per month. For more information, visit http://www.appoxee.com. Or email us at sales@appoxee.com to schedule a demo.

Eutechnyx is the world’s leading independent racing game developer, producing over 350 global game titles which sold nearly 10 million unites over the last decade. Throughout its history Eutechnyx has worked with leading car and racing brands, such as Ferrari, BMW and NASCAR.

Eutechnyx uses Appoxee for its NASCAR Manager game, which puts users in control of the “Crew Chief” seat and lets players decide the best tactics and strategy to drive NASCAR racers to victory.

Goals

Drive increased revenue and app usage with promotions and special offers

Re-activate dormant users who left or forgotten about the app

Maximizing Special Offers

On a recent limited-time promotional offer offering a discount on NASCAR Manager’s in-app currency, E-Bucks, Eutechnyx saw a huge increase (62%) in activations almost immediately after sending the push, as the graph below shows.

Even better, the message increased not just activations, but the game play by 50-60% as well, which led to a 38% increase in revenues over the typical day!

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About Appoxee

Appoxee is a mobile marketing automation platform, designed by marketers for marketers. We provide services to increase engagement, retention and revenues to your apps. Appoxee works with leading brands, agencies and publishers to serve more than 300 million users worldwide with over a billion messages per month. For more information, visit http://www.appoxee.com. Or email us at sales@appoxee.com to schedule a demo.